Re: [dev] [dmenu] [PATCH] Added option to prompt for passwords

From: Eric Pruitt <eric.pruitt_AT_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2016 14:22:16 -0700

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 11:10:26PM +0200, FRIGN wrote:
> I looked more closely at the patch and I've found potential to simplify
> it. Why not go with a [...]

Personally, I like having the asterisks reflect the actual number of
runes typed and think the cosmetics are worth the extra lines. Even if
you're typing Latin characters, I think only getting feedback every 8
key presses kind of defeats the point of having asterisks at all. You
might as well just make the flag not show any text at all which is a
pretty common alternative for Unix password prompts anyway.

In general, I find showing the asterisks useful because if I
accidentally press two keys at once or something, I have the opportunity
to correct it rather than typing something then, hitting Enter and
wondering what I did wrong. On a couple of occasions, I have also had a
key break on my keyboard, and the password prompts I dealt with most
often provided no feedback until after submission. It took me a bit to
finally figure out what was going on, and having visual feedback
would've made my life a little easier.

Perhaps the patch could support a different flag (maybe -g vs -G) for
people that do and do not want asterisks, but that makes the change even
more complex (although negligibly IMO), so I understand you don't like
that idea.

Eric
Received on Mon Jul 25 2016 - 23:22:16 CEST